You may not have heard of La-Mulana before, but La-Mulana has a strong cult following; and for good reason. Originally releasing in Japan in 2005, before an English Translation was released in 2012 for both PC and WiiWare. The latest iteration – La-Mulana EX - is now available on the PlayStation Vita.

La-Mulana EX is a brutally challenging experience, not only due to the array of old-school boss battles throughout the adventure or even the dozens of cryptic puzzles. La-Mulana EX wants to destroy you and make you regret ever starting your journey. In one case after defeating a challenging boss on my twelfth attempt, I simply turned to have a drink of water, only to turn back to the “Game Over” screen. Why you might ask? Well once the boss was defeated, the roof where the battle took place collapsed. There was no warning that this would happen, La-Mulana EX simply wanted to punish any player who wasn’t concentrating after the boss fell. When the credits finally rolled I refused to remove my eyes from the screen in case something within the credits killed me. Yes, La-Mulana EX is a game that you shouldn’t trust, and that is the beauty of it.

La-Mulana Ex follows the story of Lemeza, a 31 year old archaeologist and third generation Japanese American. Lemeza is seeking a hidden treasure, one that is held by a creature known as Mother. This creature has filled the ancient ruins with 8 of its children, known as Guardians. Each of these Guardians must be defeated in order to reach Mother and take the treasure in its possession.

The lore and details of this story are showcased on stone tablets. These tablets will either showcase cryptic hints towards the narrative, or hint to a solution to one of the dozens of puzzles throughout the ruins. Aside from that the story doesn’t go much deeper, there are less than a handful of side characters with any relevancy. These tablets are not blunt and will merely hint towards the story of Mother. The problem with delivering a story in this manner is that I was so focused on staying alive and making sure the world around me didn’t deliver a fatal blow, that I never found the story grabbed my attention to dedicate my time to it. La-Mulana EX leaves the story for you to find, but I never found myself eager to seek meaning to these cryptic pieces of story La-Mulana tried to deliver.

Though most of these tablets must be read in order to proceed, since as I mentioned most relate to random puzzles throughout the ruins. These puzzles will rack your brain as you try to figure out what exactly you’re meant to do. These solutions may include hidden pieces of the wall and floor that can be destroyed, hidden walls that can simply be walked through as normal, and many other out there solutions. This is where the challenging aspects of La-Mulana turn into frustration, making the entire experience feel more like an investment than any game I have played before.

La-Mulana is a game that expects a lot from the player. When you begin your adventure you’re given a laptop that will receive tips throughout your adventure and told to explore. There is no explanation of the buttons, how the game world works, and no hints towards the save or fast travel systems. If you happen to die before working out how the save system works, your progress will be wiped – welcome to La-Mulana. It pushes you to figure out how the world works, and won’t allow you to go any further if you haven’t figured out the basics. The opening area is known as the Gate of Guidance, which is as close to a tutorial as you will get throughout your adventure. This area showcases the art of puzzle solving at its most basic form, enemy encounters and realising that La-Mulana won’t hold back from demolishing your attempts if you’re not good enough. It’s certainly a different approach to many current experiences and one that may overwhelm new players, but those who are patient enough to strive through the pain and punishment La-Mulana offers, will experience one of the most rewarding adventures in gaming.

La-Mulana EX takes place on panels within a 2D plane, veterans of the Mega Man series will feel right at home with this style. When re-entering previous panels enemies will typically respawn. Gameplay within La-Mulana is fairly basic with attacks and jumps your main means of transferring the environment. Lemeza is able to wield a series of unlockable main weapons as well as equip sub weapons and items to extend his arsenal. There is a huge selection of weapons allowing players a great freedom of choice when it comes to slaying enemies, ranging from different styles of whips, a damaging pistol, shuriken and even a katana. La-Mulana’s jump technique is actually where most of the gameplay depth comes into play. Falling from a platform will see Lemeza performing a straight drop, while jumping off platforms allows maneuverability as he falls. It takes some getting used to but once the jump mechanic is mastered and new abilities like the Feather are unlocked, the jump technique can become a vital tool for survival.

Succeeding in La-Mulana without some sort of guide, walkthrough or internet solutions will require pages of pages of notes as you try to keep track of everything going on in the vast ruins. I personally had to visit guides repeatedly in order to figure out what exactly La-Mulana was asking me to do, where exactly I needed to go and what my current goal were. If you’re not willing to invest the time and effort needed, La-Mulana EX isn’t a game for you. Pure and simple.

Despite La-Mulana providing small hints towards these solutions, there is never a clear indication on which hint will correlate with which puzzle and even when you successfully achieve something within a certain room, you never know what your success has changed throughout the entire ruins. This is where the problems lie, there is never an indication as to where the solved puzzle may have affected the ruins and a large search needs to be conducted in order to find out what has been altered. The same problem occurs when it comes to reading hints on stone tablets. Some tablets do reference the current room, but most reference puzzles in completely different rooms within completely different areas. This is why I consider La-Mulana EX to be an investment, because it is so easy to become mentally overwhelmed by the countless requirements La-Mulana expects you to complete; especially if you are trying to avoid any outside help.

La-Mulana EX’s prized jewel is the plethora of boss encounters. These are built with an old school mentality focusing on skill, memorisation of patterns, and dealing with a lot of damaging pixels all while trying to destroy a towering foe. Each boss is unique and you will rarely see the same strategy working twice. These encounters can range from up close and personal battles, an on rails battle with a towering amphibian as you ride a mine cart, or even a bullet hell-esque encounter while flying a model plane. The range of boss encounters is incredible, not only because of the expansive variety and overwhelming challenge, but the visual design of each monster. I found myself constantly impressed by the out of this world monster design, which helped to emphasise the brutality of each encounter. Learning from each death is necessary to find the best strategy to overthrow these vicious beasts and come out alive.

These encounters can also be tackled in a separate Time Attack mode, which pits Lemeza against an army of boss monsters one by one in an effort to produce a fast time that can be posted on the online leaderboards. Various difficulties offer less health and items, pushing players to rely on skill rather than a large pool of HP or certain overpowering weapons and abilities.

La-Mulana EX’s visual display may throw many people off as the new incarnation sticks to a 4:3 aspect ratio, which is incredibly hard to see on the already small Vita screen. Despite this problem La-Mulana has some fantastic old school pixel visuals and due to the extensive selection of different areas there is huge variety. Lemeza will explore icy caverns, volcanic ruins, pitch black dungeons and much more keeping the entire journey fresh. Each new area also includes its own unique old school music track. The soundtrack is fantastic and I found myself humming many of these tracks when I was away from my Vita. The old school musical selection is impressive; showcasing how much variety can be produced with such a small selection of beeps and boops.

La-Mulana EX isn’t a game everyone will enjoy, it may not even be a game everyone will be able to complete. Unlike most recent gaming experiences La-Mulana EX asks for your undivided attention and if you don’t provide it – you won’t succeed.

La-Mulana EX is an overwhelming game, one that can certainly be more stress than it’s worth. But if you do power through the difficult moments, plan out your adventure and keep track of notable areas, La-Mulana EX can be an extremely rewarding experience.

Completing La-Mulana EX isn’t merely rewarding, it is an accomplishment in itself. If you’re able to reach the final credits, just know that you have my utmost respect. As La-Mulana EX is the most challenging game I have ever completed.

The Order: 1886 has fast become the most polarising release of 2015. Some have showcased their strong dislike for Ready at Dawn’s PlayStation 4 debut, while others have praised its excellence. I find myself in neither group, as I didn’t love my time with it, nor did I grow an intense hatred for the experience.

Ultimately, what made The Order receive such a vast array of opinions throughout the industry? After deliberating this question for weeks, I came to my own conclusion. When I think of my play-through, I find myself focusing on the narrative, the characters, and the strong atmosphere throughout the London setting. The word I find myself using to describe my opinion is interesting. The Order: 1886 is interesting. Even from the opening cut scenes, I found myself curious in how Sir Galahad found himself in this ungodly predicament. Though I myself find struggling to recall moments throughout the game where I was having much fun. That’s not to say The Order was a horrible experience. Instead, it tends to deliver an interesting experience rather than one that contains moment to moment excitement.

The game developed a strong world with an array of interesting characters, but for the most part, it kept us from exploring London itself. Though why does a game like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which thrives on providing a linear gameplay experience, succeed, when this one fails? I believe this was due to the fact The Order: 1886 constantly wanted to hold us back from having control of our own fun. Uncharted 2 is ultimately a linear game, but there are sections where it allowed the player to tackle situations from any angle and conquer the task at hand the way the player wanted. The Order never allows this. Even during the final few sections of the game, I recall simply shooting enemies within a small linear corridor before moving to the final battle. This didn’t emphasise the final encounter or ask the player to be intuitive in order to succeed; it merely threw more enemies in a smaller corridor and said “shoot.”

I personally loved using the unique weaponry throughout. Not only did it help liven up the monotony of shooting generic enemy types, but it was simply more fun to use out of this world weaponry instead of a generic arsenal. But for some reason, Ready at Dawn holds us back from using these well designed weapons as much as possible. There were only a few sections where Galahad actually begins his mission with these unique weapons in hand, and although they can be picked up from a handful of enemies during missions, for the most part, Galahad must settle for generic weapons. I understand Ready at Dawn may not have wanted the player to become overpowered throughout these sections, or perhaps they never wanted us to become bored of these new weapons. These weapons helped keep gameplay fresh and entertaining, but instead of allowing us to truly wield this interesting arsenal of weapons, it simply refuses, removing the most entertaining aspect of gameplay in the process.

This isn’t the only aspect where Ready at Dawn moderated the fun; one of the biggest culprits of this was during the infamous stealth section during the latter half of the game. The Order: 1886 is not a stealth game, and the tools provided to successfully conquer these stealth sections were poor at best. Yet, here I was spending a solid hour trying to successfully sneak my way through a poorly lit garden in hopes of avoiding contact with the enemy. Despite giving us poor tools to succeed at the task at hand, these stealth sections also produced instant fails if you don’t press a button within the correct time frame.

Galahad is no slouch, as this man could kill an entire town with his talent and arsenal of weaponry on his shoulders; yet here I was experiencing instant fails due to poor timing. There wasn’t even an option to try and fix your mistake; it was simply an instant fail. Stealth franchise veterans have learned that this isn’t the way to develop fun stealth gameplay. Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Hitman: Absolution, and even Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes allowed you to cope with your mistakes and find a way to improvise your way to success. The Order: 1886 is the best realistic looking game I have seen, truly showcasing what next generation can be. When sections like this are included in a game that is trying to showcase what next generation can be, it showcases an archaic gameplay feature that contradicts the very fibers of what it was trying to accomplish.

Despite constantly removing the chances of fun gameplay throughout Galahad’s journey, the narrative succeeds at providing an interesting and endearing tale. Galahad has been a part of The Order for an extremely long time, and even though he has been under their jurisdiction for so long, he isn’t afraid to stand up for what is right. When he loses his close friend, he becomes consumed with rage, as he seeks out the truth behind his friend’s death. Galahad is willing to break ranks and sacrifice his own life in order to find the truth. I found it hard to not respect his decision and his reasoning behind it.

I also found the origins of The Order and the Half Breed threat were also excellent, as well as the interpretation of an alternate Victorian period of London. These ideas were well constructed and weaved in historic characters from the period of time, but also produced a unique spin that kept me wanting to push forward to find out how the story would unfold.

I believe The Order: 1886 will receive a sequel at some point, but as to whether it will continue with Galahad’s story or choose another time period altogether is still questionable. Within the world Ready at Dawn have been able to create, The Order could become a series similar to Assassin’s Creed. Each new entry could tackle new Order related matters, or perhaps even venture into a further past to expand on the origins of The Order’s creation. The possibilities for new installments within the series are broad, due to such a well-developed world.

I’d love to see Ready at Dawn have another chance at providing a new entry in the series. One that acknowledges the mistakes of the original, improving on what went wrong and fine tuning what succeeded. The Order: 1886 doesn’t lack substance, but it does lack the ability to produce fun and exciting moment to moment gameplay in-between an interesting story. I don’t believe The Order should be praised or hated for what it was able to do, but I do believe this is a solid entry in what could be an entertaining series. New intellectual properties need time to find their feet, and if The Order is nurtured in the correct fashion – “The Order: 1887” could be an amazing game indeed.